Hello & Goodbye

The last and final day in HCM City. After the previous day’s disappointing day tour, I wasn’t that excited about the day trip to Cu Chi Tunnel. Would it be a long and wasted journey to a boring place again?!

Well, we woke up pretty early and moved all our things to YL and Nei’s room (we checked-out of two rooms and requested for a late check-out for one room for us to clean up after the day trip). Since YL and Nei haven’t had a chance to try the famous Pho of Vietnam, we went to Pho 2000 – one of the chain Pho stores for some beef noodles for breakfast. Hot piping noodles and popiah for breakfast – YUMMY!

When we reached ShinCafe (the local travel agency), it was a big mess as tourists stood around trying to understand the broken english instructions and pray that they get up the right bus. We eventually got summoned up a big bus but as we were one of the last few to board, the six of us was once again separated But I guess, we were glad to have some time to catch up on our sleep.

(Evidence of how badly we needed our sleep)

The loo-stop was at a handicraft factory where they made lacquer plates, bowls, jewellery boxes etc. I was really tempted to buy some of these things but having had (painful) experiences of being "kah" at such places, I stopped and convinced myself that there would be cheaper buys.

We were jolted awake by a commotion at the back of the bus. Each of us had to pay an entrance fee of , if i can remember correctly 80,000 Dong (or something like that) and the tour guide went about collecting this from everyone. However, there was a group of Japanese who refused to pay the fee and they started arguing with the tour guide. Apparently, the Japanese Brochure that they had did not update the new entrance fee and was still reflecting a much, much lower rate. They, thinking the tour guide is cheating them and at the same time insulting the rest of us who paid the more expensive fee, just refused to budge and pay up. One of them was so smug and I felt like slapping his face as he kept giving a damn irritating smile. The tour guide keep repeating himself again and again and again that the fees have changed since but they just ignored him. It was really fruitless for both can’t communicate very well and eventually the tour guide gave up. He just told them "You don’t believe me, you pay at the counter yourself" (in heavily-accented Viet English, of course).

When we finally reached the entrance of Cu Chi tunnels, the Japs finally realised their folly (how giam siap they are! – not like it is alot of money) when they paid at the counter the price that our tour guide collected from us. That slowed us down considerably though, the big group of 40 people. We followed our tour guide to a place and watched a video that told us in pictorial terms how the Viets lived during the war, how each and everyone (Including the women) played a pivotal role in winning the war.

The tour guide next led us to this empty plot of land. Empty it seems but beneath it lays a hole for the tiny Viets to hide during bomb raids. It seems pretty small from the outside but when an ang moh tried it out, he could fit well in the hole. It must have been pretty claustrophobic though.

We walked round little huts where they showed us the living quarters, the medical huts, the traps that they thought of (Damn clever! We were really amazed!). One ingenious idea was to lead the smoke from their cooking and living quarters away from them to somewhere else so that when the enemy rain bombs (thinking there is life near the smoke), they are shooting blanks at the end of only a chimney. Very, very clever indeed. We were led to a shooting range where with a fee, you could shoot AK16 and what nots. None of us wanted to, hence we just stayed around waiting for the rest of the tour group to finish.

The Viets used their knowledge and familiarity of their hometown and guerilla warfare to win (and very smartly, I must say) the Vietnam War. And then, it was the highlight of the trip! Climbing Crawling the Cu Chi Tunnels and experience how it was like during the war and how the Viets crawl their way to Victory.

 "Before"

To be continued, chased out of the room by my very "ba dao" brother.

I am on a roll….

The third day started early with American brekkie at Highlands Coffee a few minutes from our hotel. We were to board the bus to the Mekong Delta outside our travel agency. We rushed through breakfast and most of us took (or at least tried to) take a dump before embarking on the long journey.

Our yummy brekkie! Of course other than Cute_Xbraces’s

For most part of the bus ride, we were all in a semi state of grogginess as we tried to sleep on the bumpy ride. Nei, the motion-sickness man, rarely partake in our conversations and slept (or closed his eyes) the whole way.

After a few hours, the bus driver stopped at a town and the tour guide abruptly rushed everyone down the bus. With their "zi-dei,zi dei" english, we manage to gather that we have to get off the bus here and follow him through the small town. We were led to a bumboat filled with tourists and started our cruising journey down the Mekong Delta.

That started our long and boring ride through the Mekong Delta. I mean, how can you be awed by dirty, brownish water and how long can you look be interested at people selling various things onbumboats. Not long, not long. So I took to enjoying the breeze and immersing myself in some self reflection and thoughts since we were all scattered around.

We were led to an island (think: fake island set up to "kah" tourists) and were given a cultural tour of Vietnam. They showed us how to make coconut sweets, somewhat like the banned white rabbit sweet, the snake wines, the chee-cheong-fun-like rice flour (surprisingly, I can still remember the fishy taste of the sauce we dip this into), the popcorn like food. It was interesting to say the least. And then, we just walk around till we were called to board the boat again.

" taste-less Popcorn anyone?"

Conversations flowed on the bumboat – "either or?" or "neither nor?" – either Nei or SZ? ( we all know the answer to this one! It was not unanimous though and we all know why ) The bumboat stopped at another little island for us to have lunch. I expected lunch to be at least some good food (think Batam’s half day trip, decadent food for lunch – seafood galore) but it was just pork chop rice. It was decent but really unsatisfying and not appetising at all! After lunch, we roamed around the little island – spending quite some time photo-taking (hey, we have photowhore(s) around!) and with the crocs.

After a while, we were led back to the lunch area for a traditional song performance by the locals. I catch-no-ball and was stopping myself from yawning loudly half the time. It was THAT boring. One lady, though, saved the show by showing true emotions and tearing at bits of the song – have to give it to her for her professionalism. I mean, this could have been her third performance of the day.

Like a procession, we were told to get back into the boat and again, we have no idea where we were heading to next. We were led to land fnally and to a busy town where everyone seems to be hawking some food produce and what nots. We attempted to walk through town but gave that up and ended up at the cafe near the pier to while away time.

Finally, we boarded the bus to go back home! It was a relief ( at least to me ). It was off to another few hours of journey to reach District 1.

Upon returning to our hotel, we all retreated to our rooms for a nice long bath before heading out for dinner. Dinner was recommended by our hotel receptionist and it turned out that we have walked pass that restaurant several times in the previous two days. If I remember correctly, the restaurant is Quan An Ngoc. The place was filled with people and we had to queue up for quite some time before we were led to our seats. The place is a little like Marche where there are live stations and food are cooked at these stations and scattered around the place but we were served instead. We gobbled down our food as we were all famished. It was once again a less satisfying meal.

Side note: the BF really didn’t enjoy the food in HCM that much and was pretty disappointed after each meal. The tastes just didn’t quite click with our buds and he, who likes to be really full and satisfied, was complaining about the small portions.

The last night in HCM was still young and we decided to head to Saigon Bar located at Carvelle Hotel to "chill out". Saigon Bar was located at the top of the hotel and choosing the outdoor seats meant we had an excellent view of District one and allowed to be dreamy with the breeze. The indulgent couples ordered ice cream to share and cock tails too, while the singles chose more manly drinks.

The breeze plus alcohol made me sleepy and we soon left for the hotel and pack our luggages for check-out tomorrow. 

Okay, stay tune for the final installment of my HCM adventure. Off to wake the snoring sleeping cute_xbraces up!

(SEQUENCE OF EVENTS MAY BE JUMBLED UP BUT DEFINITELY NOT CONJURED UP – the events of the day are vague)

Day Two of Ho Chi Minh where the second entourage of Nei and YL joined us. Cute_Xbraces and I rose early as we were anticipating the call from YL, we got ready just in time when the receptionist called to inform that they have arrived. They, too, decided to "upgrade" to the bigger room given how small the room was. Actually, I bet it would be awkward for the two boys to be stuck in the claustrophobic room. Oh, I think I forgot to mention that the previous night, we visited several hotels and contemplated changing hotels. We were pretty sour when we saw how beautiful the rest of the rooms were :(

Anyway, we quickly gathered everyone and went for breakfast to start the day proper. Breakfast was at a restaurant near our hotel and as usual had noodles for breakfast. This trip was marred by my bad tummy and it felt queasy the whole time I was there, so "Poh Chai Yuen" became my best companion. Psychological or not, I felt better each time I consumed it. Bye bye, lao sai.

Off we go on our adventure of HCM. With 4 guys around and given their excellent NS training, the girls left the map reading and navigation in their good hands (yes?!). To give Nei and YL a taste of Ben Thanh, we walked over there but was out in a jiffy for it was really quite a sad place. Since HCM has about  1000 and 1 war museums to go to, we set about going to the first one.

To be fair, everyone was tasked to navigate using the map and bring the whole group (by foot, mind you) to the designated location. Our first stop, the Revolutionary Museum led by a certain Mr Wong. With the very "out-dated" map in hand, we set off from Ben Thanh to the museum. The place proved to be a hard find and we stopped at various intersections to read the map. We asked several locals and were often greeted with blank looks or directions we chose not to follow.

Giving up, we chose to go to another location instead. But unknowingly, we reached the Revolutionary Museum. IT WAS A BIG BORE, very much like Ford SIloso, but of course much more run-down and the artefacts very, very scattered and hastily displayed. It was an eye-opener though with the pictures of the war and diaoramas of the tunnels (they conquered the war because of this!). Although, I don’t really get the theme of this museum for there was two sections – religion of Vietnam (where they showed all the statues of the various Gods worshipped by the Viets) and marriage rituals – that didn’t quite fit in.

"Da Bao Xian"

The weather in HCM city is sweltering hot! It was hot to the max! And we wanted to relax and sit down at the popular Highlands Coffee (it was everywhere – two shops just opposite each other even?! cannibalisation never exists in their business vocabulary I guess). – This is where memory fails me and I can’t remember if we had lunch first or to the post offices but whatever - So we set off again and walked and walked and walked to our next destination, led by Nei – to the Independence Palace. Upon reaching the place, we realised that it only opens at a certain timing and thus decided to walk to Notre Dame Cathedral (nearby) first. The under-renovation Notre Dame Cathedral opens only at 3pm and we decided to shelve it. Just across the street, is where the Post Office is and we went in there for a pit stop.

We had lots of fun in the phone booths enjoying the surprise, surprise air-condition. It was damn shiok, and I was really reluctant to leave! We played "Broken telephone" and must have looked pretty stupid from the outside. I wonder if others wondered why we were so silly to coop ourselves up in a small booth when they were the silly ones stuck outside in the heat.

Anyway, since there was still time to spare, we walked (yes, we did a hell lot of walking during this trip) to Diamond Plaza for more air condition and tea break. We ended up at KFC (it seems to be Cute_xbraces personal motto to try every country’s whip potato – he still proclaims JB’s to be the best).
 

After the satisfying break, we left to go to Independence Palace. It was thankfully just a short walk from Diamond Plaza. We bought the tickets and did the touristy things, woo-ing and wow-ing our way through the museum. We had a glimpse of how the royals lived with their long and big entertainment rooms, their big roof-top garden and what nots.

It was soon Soon’s turn (haha, I am so funny) to lead the pack and bring us to the War Remnants Museum. He did not lead us to walk down accused road (yuan wang lu – okay, not funny) since he rackey-ed the direction first before pointing us to the right direction. I must say of all the museums we gone to during the trip, I was most awed by the War Remnants Museum. It may be the most run-down, the most simply -furnised museum but the stories it told, the pictures depicting the war scenes and it’s aftermath left quite an impression. A particular statement struck a cord at the irony of how Americans advocate freedom and yet imposed their values in Vietnam by invading their territory. (sorry, camera not mine – don’t have the phrase offhand). Some of the pictures were grotesque and it pained to see the children suffering from the toxic spray used by the Americans. I was looking at those Ang Mohs and wonder how they felt looking at the pictures of suffering caused by their compatriots. Golly gosh!

We left the sad place and it was now up to the girls to lead the way to the massage parlour. We were so raving about the place that we had to bring Nei and YL there, especially Nei – the virgin(virgin at massages – what were you thinking?). Girls can’t read maps? Well, at least I tried to but with much help from Soon (he representing YW mah). Hehe, It was such a long, long walk that half the time I was thinking we were walking the wrong way. Eventually, after maybe half an hour, we reached the place. Woohoo.

This time round, we decided to stay longer and make full use of their sauna, steam baths etc and since it was 2 gals VS 4 guys, YW and I took our own time in the sauna room. It was great sweating it out and I got to know her alot better while chatting with her. We lasted less than a minute in the steam bath before we ran out gasping for air.

The massage that day was unfortunately not as good as the first day. There was none of the orgasmic feeling of highness that I felt the previous day. Maybe our expectation was raised or we had a less experienced massuse, but we just didn’t enjoy it as much.

Dinner was at one of the recommended places – The BBQ People. With our usual practice, each of us were to order two dishes each and it was extravagant. We had two hot pots, lots of meat to bbq and cooked food as well. The service staff was pretty attentive and was often quick to come by to help us but I guess it is really because we looked damn blur and did not know which was cooked and which was raw.

It was a crowded place filled with locals and tourists alike and we had dinner in the downpour. Warm food after a long day and massage equates to shiok-ness.

With the heavy downpour, we hailed a cab back to the hotel. You would think after such a long day, we would be exhausted and ready for bed? But hey, there was four. And when there is four, there is mahjong. And so that was what the boys did (me for one round – much to the chagrin of the BF) and without chips, I was tasked as the accountant for the night. I did such a bad job at it, 3/4 of the time, the Accountant/Auditor (AKA Nei) and the Business student (AKA YL) was auditing my calculation. Well, I am not in HR for nothing! Hehe. It only tallied when the BF ran through the numbers again. It seemed that I gave him a little more money than he should have. Fraud?! 

We retreated to our room rooms after one round of mj to prepare for the following day – Mekong Delta!

Stay tune. ONE HOUR spent on blogging. Gosh, blogging is serious business 

The third trip with the Peeps (first being Hong Kong and second being Bekok), this time to Ho Chi Minh City – Vietnam. My colleagues have been raving about HCM and I was eager to get out of my comfort zone (Bangkok), couple that with the irresistable offer from Jetstar, a group of peeps were rounded up for this 3/4 days trip.

13th August – First Day
Due to a certain incident (Nei – you know what), the first entourage of Ss, YW, Cute_xBraces and I was to travel to HCM first with the second entourage to join the following day.

Yet again, the blur-cock me had to "lose" my passport the night before and us being the habitual last min packers meant that we only fell onto our bed at a unghastly hour and with just 3 hours of sleep, it was off to the airport for our early morning flight.

We started our journey with BK brekkie and boarded the plane for the 2 plus hours flight. And then it was "Good Morning, Vietnam". We are here.

Clearing customs was a breeze given its communist state (think: clearing customs at Shenzhen) and we were quickly whisked along to grab a cab to our hotel. As usual, we were bombarded by hagglers and pushy cab drivers but being new to the place, we thought it would be better to rely on the airport taxi services.

No amount of forum posts read, can prepare one for the horrendous roads of HCM and the endless motorcyclists, the "bo-zeng-hu" style of driving and we had a good sense of it tugged away in our little enclosure.

We were grossly disappointed with the hotel! From its website, it looks promising but.. it was disappointing to say the least. It reminded us of the sleazy Hotel 81/Motels. You know even QUALITY hotel at Balestier is much better. They showed us the room that we booked and it was small so small we took maybe 3 steps to reach the end of it. We were only satisfied when we "upgraded" ourselves to a bigger room. The room was much more decent though a tad too huge for 2.

Anyway, after settling the room saga, we made our way to the local travel agency to book our day trips for  CuChi (read: Gu-Chi) tunnels and Mekong Delta before heading to Ben Thanh Market. Online research has listed Ben Thanh market as one of the must-go and is well known for it being a cheap "shopping haven". Plus, my colleagues also raved about the food there. Cute_xBraces (a.k.a The BF), being the excellent navigator, armed with the trusty map (served us well during the days) led us to the market. We braved the streets on foot, screaming, running and holding on to dear life to respective partners when crossing the streets. It was a hell-raising experience the first day.

We were greeted by the musky smell of Ben Thanh market and quickly made our way to the food section for some beef/chicken noodles (pho). Being the ever greedy couple, the BF and I went in search of more food – grilled chicken wrapped in rice flour (acquired taste). We shop around Ben Thanh after lunch. Boy, was I truly "disturbed" by the persuasive shop keepers – "tee-shirt, miss? adidas?" and then proceeds to shove a tee shirt in my face. Despite all, got myself a cheap pair of heels (not bad for 10 bucks!) and we left Ben Thanh soon after. Because we were a day earlier, we decided to just walk around and not visit any of those "LonelyPlanet" places. So it was really aimless, reading the map and just trying to go to less touristy places.

It was only 1pm in HCM and we concluded that we would truly be bored for the night and day. You have to be there to hear how the BF was lamenting on how we would have nothing to do for the night, why there was no mahjong. So, the task to YL to beg, borrow, rob to get the mj set to us quick!

We had our second meal in HCM at Bach Dang Ice Cream and the BF finally has a taste of HCM’s famous drip coffee. The ice cream were weird and have the time I had no idea what flavour ice cream I was eating. The first HCM coffee was a literally bitter experience as he had no idea if we should mix THAT much condensed milk and was really cautious at first. The "siap-siap" taste of the coffee lingered and it was really bitter.

After satisfying ourselves with some ice cream to cool the day away, we decided to go to on of the many museums listed on the map. It was a fruitless task relying on the map to find the place. The locals were no help either, speaking very little english and even if they do, often do not know what we are talking about. Each gave a different direction from the others each time we ask. We gave that up and changed destination. That proved to be even more frustrating and we were at various intersections trying to figure out where we were.

We finally ended up at Diamond Plaza (a place we would go often) and had our dinner – KFC like dinner and bought some groceries for the night. To end our boredom, we checked the movies out but all the English-speaking movies have been shown for the day. Disappointment as to how the day/night has ended.

YW suggested going for spa/massage and it was a brillant idea. We enquired with one of the information counter lady and was given an address and directions. Once again, we got screwed by a local and walk a good 15 mins in the wrong direction before we righted our wrong. Poor Ss, who wasn’t feeling well had to endure the gruelling walk to the massage place.

Never judge a book by it’s cover. The massage place looks damn cui from the exterior and very sleazy looking (very geylang-ish) and we were tempted to walk away. However, that would meant our walk was really for nothing and since we were already there decided to give the place a try. I rushed to the toilet immediately and bombed BIG time in the toilet (this spells for me a shitt-y holiday from here onwards). I had reservations about having a massage and was pretty worried I was crap in my pants if they just lay a finger on my tummy but the worry was unfounded for. I was in too much enjoyment to worry about crapping the pants.

The place may look run-down but it is adequately furnished with shower facilities, sauna room, steam bath and massages rooms. We were led to bathe and it was heaven to finally have a bath after walking around in the heat. After the bath, we walked in our bathrobes (naked underneath (embarrassing) to the room upstairs. The next few moments were really giggly as we were told to remove our bath robes as soon as we were on the bed. I couldn’t stop giggling to hide my embarrassement. Usually they would cover us with towels immediately after but I was left to sit there albeit for a short while in my birthday suit. Oh my gosh, damn paiseh can!

The Massage was GOOD, damn shiok and they used hot stones on my back. It was super relaxing and all four of us come out with praises for the massage and in a state of fogginess. We left to return to the hotel. 

Since Ss concussed pretty early in the night, Cute_xBraces and I pretty much slept early to prepare ourselves for more fun when the second entourage of Nei and Long joins us the next morning.

More later. Day 2,3,4…